Greetings in the Lord Jesus Christ! May each of us be renewed by His saving Passion and Resurrection which we celebrate this week. As we come to the end of our Lenten journey, we also finish up our discussion of sin, forgiveness and justice. This week we’ll take up Divine Justice, penance and reparation.

When God created the universe, He brought order out of chaos. In the beginning of the Book of Genesis, we see His plan for Creation in the perfect harmony of all living things in the Garden of Eden. But man’s sin put an end to that harmony, and now Paradise exists no longer on earth but awaits us at the end of time. Sin disrupts the order – the Divine Justice – that God Himself is and to which He calls us. Sin affects God, the sinner and the rest of Creation, bringing an imbalance, a dis-harmony that must be restored.

Of course, Christ’s saving sacrifice at Calvary is the ultimate effective means of restoring that harmony to Creation; the perfect, sinless God/man’s free acceptance of death was a recompense for mankind’s sin; Jesus undid what Adam had done by Original Sin. And even now, the only means of un-doing our personal sin is by uniting our own sacrifice(s) with that perfect sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. Upon becoming perfectly contrite (that is, finding true sorrow for our sins because they offend our loving and merciful God), we confess them, we do penance, and – in a perfect act of charitable love – we do reparation for the sins of others.

It is a sobering fact that nothing we poor humans can do can make up for the offense(s) we have committed against the Most High God. We must be grateful that God gave us His only Son – God and man – who had the capacity as God to make up for our human sins. Therefore, we can’t deceive ourselves that our puny acts of penance (“say two Our Father’s and two Hail Mary’s”) really un-do the enormity of our sin(s). However, if the acts of penance are united to Christ’s Sacrifice, they have a tremendous power to do good in this world, and thereby un-do some of the damage caused by our sin(s).

Included in the concept of reconciliation is the idea of reparation. As I tell the teens, if you steal $5.00 from your mom’s dresser and spend it, and then a few days later feel perfect contrition, apologize to your mom and ask forgiveness, even if she forgives you (as mom always will! ) she’s still out $5.00! When we seek forgiveness, we accept the responsibility of restoring the “order” and “harmony” that we’ve disturbed.

Sometimes (maybe even most times) we can’t effect a 1-for-1 restoration; how do you repair someone’s good name after you’ve spread gossip about him? How do you “restore” your presence at Holy Mass last week? Since we can’t go back and perfectly restore the damage we’ve done, we sometimes excuse ourselves from this obligation. But we do so at our own peril. The souls in Purgatory are there not only to purge their venial sins and make them sufficiently holy to participate in the joy of Heaven. It’s also a place of “punishment” due to the injustice caused by sin that remains in the world. To be blunt, we can either give back the $5.00 in this world or spend time in Purgatory for it!

Since those souls in Purgatory are unable to repair the damage they’ve done, they rely on the Church Triumphant (the saints in Heaven) and the Church Militant (the members of Christ’s Body in this world) to do the reparation. The saints do it by prayer and by their merits, and we here on earth do it by prayer, sacrifice, almsgiving and good works. After we’ve done as much reparative penance as we think we’ll need to cover for our own sins, it’s a fundamentally good act to do more so that your good deeds might be applied to others who need them. Remember, God desires that everyone be saved! Saying an extra Rosary, having Masses said for the deceased, doing volunteer work – all these, if offered for reparation for sins, are pleasing to God and effective in gaining Heaven for the departed (and yourself!)

God bless, and have a wonderful Holy Week,

Fr. Jim